momagri, movement for a world agricultural organization, is a think tank chaired by Christian Pèes.It brings together, managers from the agricultural world and important people from external perspectives, such as health, development, strategy and defense. Its objective is to promote regulationof agricultural markets by creating new evaluation tools, such as economic models and indicators,and by drawing up proposals for an agricultural and international food policy.

Global food security as guest of honor in Milan

February 24, 2014

The planet will count nine billion people in 2050, an increase of two billion over the 2013 figure. FAO experts are estimating that to meet these increased needs, global food production should rise by three percent each year until 2030, against the current growth is barely over two percent.

The crucial issue of global food security will be the theme of the 2015 World Expo to be held in Milan between May 1 and October 31, under the title “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life” and will spotlight food and agricultural issues in the political scene and the media. The United Nations, the FAO and the European Union will be in attendance. France, for its part, will also be an active participant in this 65th World Expo and its pavilion will be based on four pillars:

Yet, the French Pavilion project goes further and considers that global price fluctuations and international trade deregulation are also representing factors in preventing the access to food. In addition, while international trade is inevitable, it must include regulatory mechanisms to ensure the food security of populations. This is why the report presenting the planned pavilion quotes Marion Guillou and Gérard Matheron:

“It is in our collective interest to curb excessive agricultural price fluctuations that are harmful at both extremities, since when prices are high, the poor suffer, and when prices are low, farmers are hurt and can no longer invest.”

Yesterday’s decrees and theories are now useless in a globalized and rapidly changing world. Consequently, we must remember that agriculture is specific and strategic, and thus we should consider food security as a Global Public Good1. France has long supported a better food security global governance system, especially in the framework of the G20 and of the FAO. Yet, as reaffirmed by Jacques Carles, Executive Vice President of momagri, a Global Public Good can be so only when conditions are created so that an international cooperation can manage it with pertinent instruments. Otherwise, we remain at the stage of invocation, of theory or of ideology, which have represented the permanent disadvantage of international negotiations for decades.

1 The term Global Public Good signifies “a good that must be managed collectively at the international level and according to subsidiarity principle, that is to say that any field of action that can be better managed by a global governance system than by a national or sub-regional governance system.”